Macron seeks “bold” actions. He wants an EU “military intervention force”, a common budget, carbon taxes, national conventions to discuss the future of Europe, trade prosecutors to enforce countries to stick with the rules, and a Franco-German cooperation treaty,

Mercy!

I cannot think of a more destabilizing thing than a common military force that will undoubtedly be used to wage wars. Ukraine comes to mind.

Macron proposes taxing US tech companies by value created, rather than profits. Now how the hell is that supposed to work? Who gets to decide “value created”.

Franco-German Cooperation Treaty

Really?! And not include the rest of the EU?

How inclusive!

Ultimate Irony

The ultimate irony in Macron’s “Radical Appeal” is that Brexit, the rise of AfD, Marine Le Pen, and the rise of Beppe Grillo all happened because nannycrats insist on “more Europe” against the direct wishes of a large and growing percentage of the population.

I exit with this Tweet:

In 2015 Merkel & Gabriel crushed the Greek Spring together, while practising socialism for bankers. Are they surprised now with the results?

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too much, and much too late. the time for a defense force was decades ago when europe’s backyard was genocidal. the time for a common budget was decades ago before sham EU economics became so obvious. the time for a carbon tax was decades ago when climate science was new enough to actually go along.

Most “US tech companies” (with a few _very_ notable exceptions) have little profits (heck many lose money), and create less value. All they mostly live off, is Fed pumped up stock prices, and hype.

Greek Spring was crushed on account of the Greeks being a bunch of spineless pushovers. The Germans may have tried, but had no way of forcing the Greeks to accept anything. A raised middle finger, backed up by rifles (and/or artillery) behind every blade of grass and under every mattress; is how non-pushovers deal with outsiders demanding they abandon their “Spring.” Backpedaling and excuses, are how pushovers make up petty excuses for why they themselves ultimately abandoned it.

Re Germany and Greece. Greece wanted German money. How does putting rifles behind every blade of grass in Greece force the Germans to write a check in Berlin?

The Greeks have been flushing their economy down the toilet for going on a century. They are a very old society that has lost all internal trust so it is everybody for themselves. They are a salutary lesson to this country as we are going down a similar divisive cultural path.

The “Greek Spring” that Varoufakis is referring to, was about debt forgiveness and an end to externally imposed “austerity.” That’s what he is blaming Germany for “crushing.” While, in reality, the Greeks could easily have, de facto, forgiven their own debt. As well as told Germany to go shove it wrt “austerity measures.”

In the bigger scheme of things, you are likely right: Even if not externally imposed, Greeks would still have to contend with “austerity.” But, still, as Acton put it, “Freedom is itself the highest political end.” Starving to death unshackled, still beats licking breadcrumbs off a slave master’s floor.

“They are a very old society that has lost all internal trust so it is everybody for themselves.”
That is the essence of what is Greece, and in fact, the whole Balkan.
They are in the mess because everybody is for him/herself, from top to bottom; there is no social cohesion. The corrupt Greek/Balkan ruling classes figured out that the EU ruling class has a grandiose project for which no cost will be spared. A perfect match which they could milk with abandon.

Varoufakis is total nutcake, and Greece is a basket case that belongs to Africa rather than Europe.
To be fair, Macron had one sane idea: cut the entire French government size by one third.
To stimulate your imagination, the incoming German parliament will have about 700 members for a population of about 83 million. That’s roughly ten per million, or if you prorate it to US, 2,300 members of congress.
The European parliament is creeping towards a thousand.
These are well paying upper-middle class jobs. Who said the middle class is dying?

Actually, it postulates a Franco/Germanic Union that pretty much forces most smaller nations to join. Some countries do not wish to and when a puppet government resists, they send in the army. The US, Britain, and Poland join together to fight back. It’s a great story.

reminds me of a ?monty python? sketch showing a closeup of a slow moving steam roller followed by a cut to a horrified person standing in its path followed by a pan out showing the person could easily escape their doom by simply walking away…

For the last couple of months, Mish greeted with glowing enthusiasm every political force promising to weaken the EU. He got Brexit that actually strengtens it, followed by a series of deceptions when Putin-loving anti-EU parties got crushed in the Netherlands, France and now Germany. Everywhere in western EU the nationalits vote seems not to excite more than 15% of the voters. Get over it, the EU will get not weaker but significantly stronger from now on, and the Macron-Merkel alliance will be the leading force of this historical transition.

Brexit weake3ned the EU
The German election weakened the EU
Politics in Italy weakened the EU
Bickering in Poland weakened the EU
The only thing that did not weaken the EU was the French Election
Even then, France and Germany have different goals
Pro-Europe Eurointelligence agrees with my assessment
Get over it.

You can check in, but you can’t check out of Hotel EU. French politicians are experiencing nostalgia for the Imperial Power days when the military could invade debtors like Germany and rule over colonies like Algeria and Senegal. Like Mussolini’s fascist fantasies of ruling Ethiopia, and a good diversion from France’s internal ills. The EU colonial empire is conveniently close to home. So, Hungarians and others better stop whining and get out before déjà vu strikes and USSR tanks rebranded with EU logos roll into town. Eastern Europe’s briefly sovereign nations are being transformed into EU provinces, like what Catalonia is to Spain. The French message is that the Brussels-based EU Empire bureaucracy is itching to use military and totalitarian police state powers to consolidate territorial gains and strengthen rule over once-sovereign nations being transformed into EU provinces. The UK was lucky to get out when it did. Eastern Europeans traded one slave master (USSR) for another (EU).

The Russians are desperate for pretty much any non drunk semi youthful mirrorfogger with ties to the West, rather than China and/or the Muslim world, that they can get their hands on by now. They’re yet another once-were power with a population bent on beating the Japanese to outright extinction.

Unless some of the ever dwindling number of existing Japanese, decide to start making more Japanese………..

What’s especially alarming about the Japanese case, is they have no highly fertile minorities. In the US, even if the population at large may be temporarily shrinking, you have Mormons (and some others). So self inflicted extinction is unlikely. Ditto Israel. In Russia, there “may” be sufficiently large numbers of Old Believers and other hard conservatives tucked away in the hinterland (+some diaspora who may at some point return if the current Russian state weaken), but not in even close to the numbers of US Mormons.

In Japan, there are no stable subgroup clinging to the Go Forth and Multiply dictum. Instead, the whole country seem hell bent on proving Mishima’s notion, that Japan de facto died with the dishonor of Hirohito’s surrender, with the rest being, at most, a somewhat drawn out technicality.

As a US citizen I’m in favor of an EU army. Give them our European bases and just leave the hardware (but keep the spare parts). Then maybe they can fight all the wars in the middle east. After all, it’s their oil and gas not ours. We get ours from Canada, Mexico and South Dakota.

Macron plan to create a new Bonbon fleet to block the invasion of enemy from within and the takeover of core Europe by foreigners. Militarily, it’s true, France is the most powerful nation in Europe. It can provide a punishing nuclear umbrella. Has a strong military industrial base.
His plan, in other words, is that France will be the dominant country in Europe, as it was
supposed to happen a while ago, but France BK and the 1789 revolution, beheaded the plan.
The Bonbon fleet didn’t do that well against an numerically inferior English fleet, south of Cadiz, Spain.
That event ensured that England will “rule the waves” and consume a lot of sugar in the next
100 years.
The British are still on sugar high.

“Macron proposes taxing US tech companies by value created, rather than profits. Now how the hell is that supposed to work? ”

Martin Armstrong wrote the other day that, “Germany is looking to order companies to prepay VAT tax before they even collect it. Companies in Germany will now have to pay the VAT immediately to the government on any amount they have billed to a customer.”

Why do I keep picturing the EU leaders as mini Yosemite Sams? Is Theresa May a good likeness of Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck? Putin might make a good Sylvester the Cat. Think about it. Loony Tunes goes Bizarro, news at six.

You must admit there are certain synergies in creating a common military/enforcement agency, incl business and financial regulations. At the outset the Euro did away with inflation and uneven pricing of goods between countries, and disinflation continues to this day. Part of this is not allowing unregulated business to compete with those who play by the rules.You see the mess which allowing Chinese prison labor to compete with American business did cause. There are no more prison factories but the economic distortions still exist.

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